Start-up Spotlight: Online leisurewear retailer over the moon with continued growth
AN ONLINE leisurewear retailer has its sights set on further growth after recruiting more staff while plans are in place to increase its production site by 2,500 sq ft.
Birstall-based Banana Moon, a family business launched in 1993 by husband and wife Paul and Jackie Grace and their business partner Nikki Jackson, has turnover of just over £2m but expects to grow this by £500,000 in 2016 after creating seven jobs, bringing its workforce to 30.
The business started by specialising in embroidering emblems and logos on school uniforms, later expanding into printing. It is now a market leader in personalised clothing with a 7,500 sq ft printing facility including a specialist in-house design, embroidery and printing team production team.
It supplies schools, colleges and universities with personalised leisure wear, such as graduation t-shirts and jumpers, and is also an approved supplier to the British Army for squadrons ‘downtime’ wear.
The company, which can print 1200 T-shirts an hour, also produces promotional products for the film industry.
Alex Grace, managing director and son of Banana Moon’s founders, said: “We do a great deal for the education sector, but also for charities for running events etc, and promotional T-shirts and bangs ahead of film releases for the likes of Amazon Prime and Netflix.
“We are pleased with how the business is continuing to grow and our aim is to become more and more well-known in our existing markets and branching out further in the corporate sector. We are contacted regularly by agencies for big firms in Manchester, Leeds and London for printed clothing for charity events for example, and we hope this will continue to be an area of growth for the company.”
The business plans to expand its production facility by the end of the year.
“We have an upper floor unit which we intend to expand into later this year to really boost our production capacity, adding another 2,500 sq ft to our existing facility,” said Mr Grace.
